With the rise of humanitarian emergencies in the world, we are more than ever in need of global solidarity. What can we do to help foster prosocial behavior and increase donations for disaster relief? Here are some tips and examples for marketers, CSR professionals, and decision-makers.

Invest in art, target art lovers. A study on data from the US by Kou et al. (2020) found a long-term positive relationship between general arts consumption and prosocial behaviors (http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/aca0000269). Similarly, evidence from three field studies conducted by Rathje et al. (2021) suggests that people are more likely to donate after seeing theatre(https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2021.104138).

Use defaults options. To investigate the effect of default options on donation behavior, Schulz et al. (2017) conducted an experiment among students in Switzerland. They asked participants whether they would like to donate a percentage of their earnings from previous tasks to a charity of their choice. The experiment found that providing participants with a list of default charities significantly increased charitable giving (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2018.04.001).

Use individual stories.  Lee and Feeley (2016) conducted a meta-analysis of more than 40 studies to investigate the willingness to help others. They found that prosocial behavior significantly increases when recipients can be identified, for example, by using a photograph of a person in need (an often replicated finding known as the “identifiable-victim-effect”; https://doi.org/10.1080/15534510.2016.1216891).

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